Christmas with the family

For the first time since we married, we stayed home for Christmas! No triple Christmas flights or octuple Christmas road trips this year - instead all the Christmasing came to us. 13 people and 5 dogs (each from a different house) for a total of 18 stalkings.

All the stocking named and ready to hang by the fire with care

Christmas eve dinner!

Clockwise: Joy-Mom, Cousin Minmin, Avunculus Joel, Brother Tim, Sister Krista, Brother Daniel, Sister Amanda, Ariel, Tim, Alice-Mom, Rich-Dad, Grandpa Ed (Dawn-Mom flew in late)

Daniel and Amanda releasing a wish lantern after dinner

Wellhouse means water. Water means baths.

The goal: running water by Christmas and an indoor space with heat and light.  

The dream: Our Google SketchUp model is carefully drawn, including furniture and paint colors. In the imaginary world, we have a cozy, functional space. 

-- The downstairs has the water pressure tanks, an electrical panel, hot water, laundry, and a giant claw-foot tub. 

-- Outside, there is a covered work area with lights and an outdoor shower - great for butchering chickens, washing the dog, milking the goats... 

-- Upstairs is a tiny bedroom. 8' x 12'. We are calling this the "mother-in-law" as we were designing it thinking about Dawn coming for Christmas and how unappealing sleeping in the tent in the snow sounds. (Don't worry! Dawn will have a warm place to sleep for Christmas, one way or another!) Also, a tiny porch up stairs - born from my desire to turn the well-house into a tree-house type play fort. 

The progress: The trucks have come to drill the well in September before the ground became too wet to drive on. The trucks came three days to drill the well 300 feet. The trucks have come to install the pump. The water flowed. 

Drill and tender trucks in position, drilling for water.

On Wednesday, November 23rd, the day before Thanksgiving, some kind and generous friends showed up to push wheelbarrows of concrete up hill in the mud to get our pad poured for the well house before the weather turned to freezing at night. We have the greatest friends! On short notice too! Dad and I then kept returning to smooth the concrete little by little until midnight. 

The crew waiting for concrete: Tim, Jordan, Mike, Sean, Ariel, Joy-Mom

Boardwalk through the mud. Not wide enough for most of the wheelbarrows, but a nice idea and a little better to walk on.

Dad and Ariel putting the finishing touches on framing the pad.

Tim dumping the first load (of many) of concrete into our form.

The plan: I've been busy measuring stud lengths, buying wood, cutting studs, organizing the wood, and making a detailed plan. Hopefully this will be the weekend walls go up! So far I have cut 34 boards to length, which is all of the brown colored in boards in the diagrams below. We also have all the downstairs windows though we still need a door. Today my goal is to cut the rest of the wood and sort it into four piles for the four walls. Tomorrow and the rest of the weekend we will get our best construction friends to come join us and get buys with the nail gun assembling our home-made well-house kit. I have high hopes that on Monday or Tuesday I will be going to the store for joists for the ceiling/next floor and a big stack of plywood.

Meanwhile, it's snowing here and school is canceled for the day. Time to bundle up and get to work!

East wall, facing towards fire-pit and driveway.

North wall, facing towards bushes and trees.

South wall, facing towards the trail.

West wall, facing towards the wetlands.

Cut-list for today. the 34 at the top right are already cut and stacked. 

Left column is by wall, right column is the same boards but sorted by length.

What hapend to August to December?

Life got busy.

When we got back from fishing, we got to spend some time visiting and having visits from some people we really love. Ariel went to be part of Acacia's wedding on the Olympic Peninsula, Dawn-Mom came to visit, Alice-Mom came to visit, Andy and Elias came for their anniversary,  Tim went to visit Mike and Holly on the Olympic Peninsula, Joy-Mom and Rich-Dad came for a visit, Roni-Mom and Joe-Dad came for a visit, Ariel went to visit Andy and Elias, Felix and Morgan came for a visit during a storm, we all went to Daniel-Brother and Amanda's wedding, Adrienne came for a visit, Tilly-the-human came for a visit, we went camping for Tim's birthday, Grandpa's birthday and Thanksgiving happend... something like that. We quickly fell back into the now-familiar pattern of a revolving door of whirlwind visits with friends and family, stacked back-to-back and filling the in-betweens with busy, but each a person we love and are so happy and grateful to see. But that's sort of our baseline.

On top of that work started back up for Tim, now increased to an hour of over-time every day (plus a good-sized raise - woohoo!), days got shorter, darker, colder, we finally got the fence finished-enough to remind Tilly not to run off. We built additional houses for the goats and chickens, put up electric fencing, moved them over to the property. We've been busy working at this "how to make running water happen" project; clearing trees, leveling land, scheduling expensive work crews to get a well drilled - meanwhile hauling water in the truck and using water sparingly to wash dishes and cook. But again, still sort of our crazy version of baseline.

The real clincher in stopping all blogging from August to December came as Ariel started work for the fall. Ariel agreed to teach all the first grade classes from the public school in the school gardens on Mondays, all the kindergarten classes on Tuesdays, lead a new middle school program at Calyx Wednesday through Friday, including Thursdays at a working farm and Friday nature skills with extra students those two days... and Ariel was trying to keep up with volunteering with the Fire Department and Search and Rescue. Oh, and direct market selling 500lbs of frozen sockeye salmon, with weekly pick-ups on the far side of Seattle and coordinating drop-offs all over the island. Oh, and milking the goats for a half-hour or more every morning.

Blogging stopped. Sanity stopped. And Ariel said, "But other people work 5 days a week and it's no big deal! Other people work and have a dog! Other people work and volunteer a little here and there! I should be able to do this!!!" And Tim said, "Other people don't live in a bus and have to haul water. Other people aren't working on building their own house. Other people aren't also running a farm. Other people are stressed out and unhappy. It's okay to say no!"

So Ariel quit the fire department, and Ariel stopped milking the goats, and Ariel stopped working on Mondays, and Ariel relied a lot on other people to help with teaching, especially on Thursdays and Fridays. And Tim got a coffee maker.

We learned it doesn't work for us BOTH to work full-time or over-time and still expect to keep up with all the things we love. One of us needs to be around to take care of the little things or the unusual things while the other is away working, and for now that means I am scaling back on some of the things I do and puting our family and farm first.

Tilly, Ariel, and Dawn-Mom.

Ariel, Tilly, and Tim.

Tim and Dawn-Mom.

Dawn-Mom and the "grand-kids".

Tim getting a chance to go shooting, visiting Mike and Holly.

Tim's Birthday.

Birthday's need dollar-store mustaches and dinosaur hats.

Camping birthdays particularly need big dollar store money glasses to go with the dinosaur hat.

Our favorite Washington campground for Tim's birthday with good Juneau friends.

The wedding!!! And now there are 6 siblings. Marriage is magic like that.

Thanksgiving, with balloons left over from Grandpa's birthday.

August: Dawn-mom, roto-coptors, and chicken coops

Home from Bristol Bay always takes some time to settle back in. Tim got through the last week of fishing by imagining the kind of drone helicopter he would get, and he added some upgrades to the plan so it might be useful as a search tool as well. Tim ordered parts and built the flying machine himself.

Soon, he was up in the air on test-flights and working out the programming and mechanical bugs.

Tim got the video screen working to fly remotely and Ariel hid objects (jackets) around a field for Tim to practice searching for. 

Tim also took some flights over the property to take pictures of our progress. 

On the right side of that picture is a little white barn, fresh for the chickens. 

While Tim was dreaming up drones on the boat, Ariel was concocting coops. I decided I better make the whole thing strong enough for a heard of goats, or maybe strong enough to be our new guest cabin.

The base, I could carry from the driveway to the newly-flattened spot in the brush, but as the walls went up, the barn got very heavy and I was glad to have it already in place. Someday I might want to move it and it will be an adventure!

The roof is on, the electric fence is up and energized, nest boxes were ready and fresh shavings down. I had been reading about people using sand for bedding instead of shavings and was intrigued but ended up chickening out on trying something new.

Catching the chickens to bring to their new home was quite a spectacle. Grandpa watched and documented from the porch as we chased chickens all over the yard, after my idea of louring them into the back of the truck with food proved highly ineffective. 

Dawn-mom came up for a visit to see our crazy life and bravely slept in the guest tent. 

Dawn finally met her grand-kids.

We went to see all the animals and race-cars (and drift-racing buses! And land-boats!) at the State fair

We had dinners over the campfire.

And too soon the visit was over and we had to say goodbye again for now. 

July: Tilly's birthday and other search adventures

Tilly's birthday is July 23rd and this is the first year I've ever spent it with her! The first year she was in Iowa and I was in Alaska getting ready for our wedding. The second and third year, I was fishing and she spent her day with "Grandma". This year, thanks to Acacia's wedding, I was home in time!

Shaving Acacia's head at the wedding to fund-raise for St. Baldrics.

To get to the wedding in time, I hopped a tender from Ugashic to Naknek, flew overnight-ish to Seattle, caught the first shuttle of the morning to Whidbey, Grandpa picked me up from the shuttle and dropped me off at my pre-packed car which I drove straight to catch my ferry to Port Townsend, and got there just in time to set up for the wedding. I hope I didn't still smell like fish! I took my hair out of it's braids for the first time all summer, put on clean clothes, and felt pretty fancy. I finally got home the next day and got to sleep for the first time in what felt like a week after de-summerizing the bus.

And for Tilly's birthday, we did her favorite things: we went to a mock-search up in Sedro-Woolley where she was a super-star! The first case, I carried her on my shoulders through blackberries over my head, she ran around in a corn field and in the woods, then we came back around to the big open field at the end where she got to be the dog to make the "find". The second scenario, we took a nice walk past some ripe blackberries and ran around while some other dogs did the leg-work and finding. Then we went to a new dog park with all our search friends! What could be a better way to spend the day?

On the way home, we stopped at Aunt Noree's house to see the rest of the family and congratulate Cousin Sarah on dental school. Tilly was very good after such a big day and found a good spot for a nap amid the party.

Aunt Jody, Uncle Loren, Uncle John, Aunt Beth, Dad, Aunt Noree

The next week, Tim was back from fishing too - just in time to join us in some repelling training for search.

Ariel and Tilly geared up and ready to repel.

Tim took Gracie down the ropes so the puppy could get some hang-time experience.

Tim and Margot holding dogs while humans hook into lines.

Tim learning the ropes.

Ariel and Tilly going off the drop.

Tim and Gracie lining up on the drop.

Andy and Elias came for a visit on the weekend to see the property and catch-up. Their next stop was Alaska where Andy was going to go hunting for the first time and needed a crash-course on gun safety before going. Tim led an excellent intro to firearms course for us and everyone did a little shooting while the dogs put up with the noise.

Reviewing parts and safety before going out

Andy and Tim lining up some shots with the .22 rifle

Elias trying out the hand-gun

In exchange, Andy and Elias taught us about aerial yoga after a trip to the farmers market.

Stretching to warm up

One person is the "base" and the other flies! Tim and I tried it. 

It takes a lot of strength and flexibility.